


Bargain

by Elycien



Category: Doctor Strange (2016)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Extended Scene, Gen, Temporary Character Death, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 19:24:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8634985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elycien/pseuds/Elycien
Summary: Dormammu takes Stephen Strange apart.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was fascinated by this scene, and the change we see in Stephen - from someone whose suffering causes him to lash out and hurt others after the accident, to someone who willingly and repeatedly suffers for the sake of something bigger than himself. Here's my take on it. Thanks for reading.

It’s quick, at first, each attempt ending in a blinding but mercifully brief instant of pain. And then something changes, and before Stephen can say anything more than “Dormammu--” the entity sends a spear of energy straight through his body and he falls to the ground, gasping, choking, and clutching the gaping hole in his abdomen. The loop does not reset. He’s dying. Not dead.

Any minute, he’s expecting Dormammu to finish him off, but… he doesn’t. Just watches. Shaking uncontrollably as the shock of blood loss sets in, Stephen forces himself up on one elbow, thrusting out his other hand to produce another spell, one last act of defiance. Another spike comes hurtling down, piercing him through the shoulder and pinning him to the ground. Stephen jerks, biting back a sharp cry of pain.

“I wonder what it will take before you falter?” he hears Dormammu saying, before he mercifully blacks out.

His body’s tense and steeled before he even sets down on the small planetoid’s surface, but Dormammu allows him to say his piece before sending a searing blast of energy his direction. Stephen leaps aside, not quite fast enough. The energy burns the right side of his body, his face, and the Cloak of Levitation is set aflame. He falls writhing on the ground, clutching at the charred side of his face, a horrible strangled keening escaping his throat. Stephen has barely enough presence of mind to look up with his remaining eye at his prisoner, his murderer. “W-well?” he demands.

“You will die,” Dormammu growls. “I decide when.”

The  _ when _ comes later - minutes or hours, he honestly doesn’t know - when Dormammu tires of his agonized cries and slices down with a burst of force that severs his head from his shoulders.

He touches down on Dormammu’s planetoid and is immediately whisked back into the air again, a tentacle coiled around his neck. “Dormammu,” he chokes out, gasping for breath, “I’ve come to bargain.”

Dormammu laughs, and it isn’t a pleasant sound. “I can outlast you, sorcerer,” he says. “I will  _ always outlast you.” _ The coils wrap tighter around Stephen, pinning his arms, his legs. He can feel the cloak jerking madly in an attempt to free him, to no avail. Dormammu increases the pressure until he can feel his bones beginning to crack under the force of it - first several of his ribs give way, then his left tibia, and then his spine snaps in his lower back and mercifully takes the sensation in his legs with it. His head is pushed back, bending his neck nearly to the breaking point.

“You know you are the one who can end this.”

Stephen’s  _ no _ is a tiny sound, nearly inaudible with the air forced from his lungs, but he can still hear Dormammu’s snarl of rage and feels a small glimmer of satisfaction before the demon snaps his neck.

It starts to blur together. He’s burning to death, he’s choking and struggling for air, he’s watching horrified and helpless as his heart is ripped from his chest while it still beats. ”Your kind is so fragile,” Dormammu is telling him, and this time he hasn’t the strength to answer, lying beneath solid stone and sobbing in agony as the crushing weight pulverizes his bones. He gave up on the naive notion of stoic endurance some time ago now. “There are so many ways to end you.” He’s not sure  _ where  _ that one ends--

“I am patient,” says Dormammu, tearing Stephen open from neck to hip. He tries to open his mouth but only chokes on the blood, falls convulsing in it. “I can wait. And you, sooner or later...” If there’s anything else Dormammu has to say, Stephen doesn’t hear it, not this time--

His right arm is gone and he doesn’t remember why. “You think you understand pain?” Dormammu roars. Losing patience, Stephen thinks, but it’s hard to keep hold on why that matters. He’s pinned down by a spike through his chest, just below his sternum, and he’s twitching weakly as he tries to pull free. “I haven’t even  _ begun--” _

“Pain always brings out the worst in your species, sorcerer,” Dormammu says, almost conversationally. He waits for Stephen to drag himself upright again, broken leg shaking under his weight, before slamming him to the ground again and holding him there with sheer magical force that far outweighs Stephen’s. “We will soon see what it brings out in you.”

That much is true, Stephen thinks. He bites back another scream and tries not to vomit as another spear of cold, black crystal pierces clean through his stomach. He’s seen people at their worst, it used to be his  _ job, _ and then he,  _ he _ was the worst of all, wasn’t he, those months after the accident, clawing for an escape from the pain even at the expense of anyone who ever cared about him - he cannot afford to give into that now, can’t sacrifice what’s at stake,  _ he is the sacrifice-- _

Death finds him, again and again and again and again, a crushed torso, a spike through his neck, charred flesh, a shattered spine--

“ _Why?” _ Dormammu is roaring eventually, when he no longer has the strength to say anything beyond  _ Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain _ when he lands in front of his enemy and that first blow hits, again and again. “You can’t last - you will  _ break! _ ”

No, Stephen thinks, and closes his eyes and braces against the instant of agony as flames consume his body. No, I already have.

Each loop comes faster and faster. Dormammu is howling with rage, striking him down again and again, and each time his face is impassive as he approaches for the first time, no trace of the agony which had ended his life. Each time he’s screaming before the end.

This is his reality, and part of him has stopped expecting it to end at all. Until it does. Until it’s Dormammu who breaks down, roaring for Stephen to stop, to set him free. And finally, Stephen can make his demands. “End your assault on my world. Never come back.”

Dormammu must truly be desperate, because he agrees. The way he looks at Stephen as he does is no less full of hatred and malice than it was during the countless iterations of the loop - moreso, perhaps - but there is something new. It almost looks like fear.

At the cusp between worlds, where the formless shapes of the Dark Dimension give way to twisted buildings in Hong Kong, Stephen hesitates. His cloak flutters up around him, a fold of cloth wrapping around his trembling wrist. “I know,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry. You burned with me, didn’t you?” He has no idea if the cloak can completely understand him or not, but he’s long past feeling silly for talking to a piece of clothing. The idea that the cloak’s somehow  _ alive _ is no longer outside the realm of possibility, given his newfound definition of possibility.

It’s over. The price is paid, and reality moves forward. He may not have beaten Dormammu, but he was not broken either. From now on, he thinks, that will have to be enough - to fall, but not break, as he stands in the gap between reality and unreality. And somehow, he’s okay with that. He’s been through fire and he’s come out on the other side.

Far beneath him on the streets of Hong Kong, he thinks he can make out the stationary figures of Wong and Mordo and Kaecilius, still frozen in time until he returns and restarts the clock once more. Shards of glass and rubble from the Sanctum hang suspended in midair, waiting for him to set it right. Stephen takes a deep breath to steady himself, and holds out his arm still wreathed in glowing ancient sigils from the Eye of Agamotto. “Time to keep going,” he murmurs, and begins to descend.


End file.
